Are We Looking for the Future of Knowledge Management in the Wrong Place?

Everyone seems to be talking about knowledge managers becoming the new knowledge curators in the AI era. But as AI becomes increasingly capable of finding, filtering, and organizing information, is this really where our unique value lies?

I suggest revisiting two fundamental principles of Knowledge Management and exploring the new opportunities they offer: Context and Actionability.

1. Strengthening Professional Context
Develop mechanisms and foster an organizational culture in which knowledge sharing also includes context: the circumstances, considerations, assumptions, and experience behind the knowledge.
Embed this context in conversations between people, organizational knowledge documentation, and interactions with AI, enabling deeper understanding and more relevant, informed use of knowledge by both people and the AI agents supporting them.

2. Turning Knowledge into Action
Leverage the new opportunities offered by AI agents to transform professional knowledge into organizational capabilities.
Integrate insights, best practices, and professional judgment into agents that support thinking, decision-making, and even the execution of actions.

AI is not merely an opportunity to manage knowledge more efficiently. It is an opportunity to deepen the very meaning of Knowledge Management: strengthening context and transforming knowledge into real organizational capabilities.